Migrants, commuters, and townsmen: aspects of urbanization in a small town in Kenya

dc.contributor.author

Lang, Brian

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2018-05-22T12:43:52Z

dc.date.available

2018-05-22T12:43:52Z

dc.date.issued

1975

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http://hdl.handle.net/1842/30379

dc.description.abstract

en

dc.description.abstract

In order to make sense of the social processes
taking place in Machakos, the township must be situated
within two dimensions, the situational (or systemic) and
the historical. The situational dimension refers to the
systems of interaction beyond the township itself, of which
Machakos is a component part, and the historical dimension
to the factors which have shaped the growth of the town.
The situational consists of the rural hinterland of Machakos
as labour-supplying area and, more recently, producer of
cash crops, and beyond to Kenya as a system of social,
cultural and economic structures. The historical consists
of factors both specific to Machakos, such as the actions
of John Ainsworth and Ismail Ahmed, and general, formed byKenya
as British colony and then independent nation of the
Third World.

en

dc.description.abstract

We must avoid condemning urban anthropology to
the fate which almost befell the urban sociology of Britain
a few years ago, when it was suspected that because so
much of British social life is urban, any consideration of
urban life is merely 'sociology'. British urban sociologists
have, however, come to appreciate that there are specific
features of urban life amenable to study, significant for
an understanding of how town and city life affect urban
dwellers. It is suggested that the main feature of the urban
system is the housing market, competition within which may be taken as a direct expression of the differential
distribution of power in urban society and of wider
aspects of social stratification. Transferred to
the African scene, it may be that the job market may
be treated in the same way, as an aspect of social life
at its most extreme in towns, where the jobs are in
greatest numbers and in greatest demand. Features of
town life must, though, be related to the society of
which the town is a part. The task of urban anthropology
then, should be to explore the dynamics of social life
as manifested in towns, and in doing so to meet Southall's
expectation of anthropology in general - "to provide
convincing accounts of what is happening to people in
varied real life situations and to set these in a broader
framework of time and space."

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dc.publisher

The University of Edinburgh

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dc.relation.ispartof

Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2018 Block 19

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dc.relation.isreferencedby

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dc.title

Migrants, commuters, and townsmen: aspects of urbanization in a small town in Kenya